Failed Pipe

A past client called to report a strange hissing sound emanating from beneath her kitchen area. She said “It sounded like a machine running or air moving”. It seemed like no big deal until she noticed a crack in her drywall in the same general area. That is when I got involved. After lifting the lid on the crawl space it became obvious that she had a leak beneath her floor.

Whats that sound?

I instantly noticed a high humidity condition on my face and got a sinking feeling about what I was going to discover. I Jumped down into the hole which was at least 30′ away from the sound. As  crawled deeper into the space I could hear the noise getting louder but there were too many obstructions to set eyes on what was up. I saw moist plastic and concrete but was too far away to see the actual leaking pipe.

We immediately shut off the water to the home and got better access through a closer crawl hatch. I found a polybutylene line that had a pinhole blowing water onto the visqueen.

The repair

Pipe repair

The hole had to have happened spontaneously, likely as a result of a kinked line when the home was built over 20 years ago. The fix for the damaged 1/2″ line was a PEX patch. Thankfully a second crawl space access was closer to the problem. Fans and dehumidification were the next few steps. Thankfully no serious long term sequelli resulted but oh my gosh it could have been worse.

In addition to finding and fixing that problem we found and fixed a duct that had fallen off the plenum. A reminder to go look at your crawl space from time to time.

The moral of this story is that if you hear some strange unexplained noise in your home DO NOT assume that it is nothing and let is go without exploring and identifying what the heck is going on.

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